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Friday, November 8, 2013

Gingerbread House Mother Daughter with a "love at home" theme

Optional: Developing Talents #2

Learn to sing, play, or lead a song from the Children’s Songbook.Teach or share the song in a family home evening or at Primary. Discuss how developing talents helps prepare us for service to Heavenly Father and others.

Learn to sing the super short, but sweet primary song "home" or "love at home". Have a brief discussion on the importance of love at home with the mom's and daughters. Then have the girls and mothers build sweet homes of their own!

2. At least twice a year, a Primary activity day should include opportunities for the children to share what they have learned and accomplished.

You may want to have a Faith in God tracking sheet for the Mothers and Daughters to fill out as they arrive. They would go through and quickly check off everything they remember doing. Have them write on the bottom of the sheet their favorite activity and tell their mom about it. Make a note if they are on track (6+ activities for 9 year olds, 12+ for 10 year olds, 18+ for 11 year olds plus preparing for young women activities). Save these in a file for the leaders during the coming year.

To preprare, two leaders got together and prebuilt about 20 graham cracker houses assembly line fashion. Graham crackers should be a high quality brand and are MUCH cheaper at Sam's or Costco. The houses were made by cutting graham crackers with either scissors or a steak knife to the right shape and then glued together using melted sugar, for stability and time saving purposes this is better than icing. We used six graham crackers per house. Two cut into a "house shape" for the front and back wall. The sloped edges should be cut so the walls match the width of a graham cracker. The side walls were a cracker cut to 3/4 length. The roof pieces were two regular sized crackers. Melted sugar is as dangerous as hot glue and works like hot glue, no kids should be around. Put about 1/2 a cup of sugar in a frying pan, stir with wooden spoon, and heat it until it melts (medium heat.) It burns easily so I have to keep adjusting the heat. When you run out make more. If the sugar gets too brown, you can still use it. No one will eat it anyway and it works great. Dip the edge of the two side walls and quickly attach to front wall, attach the other pieces the same way. We put all the houses on cookie sheets for transporting. We brought tons of bowls for distributing candy.

You can cut up boxes with an exacto knife that are approximately 12"x12" and cover them with foil for bases. If you assign each girl to bring her own base, that saves a lot of time and works just as well. The schools always make our kids bring their own cardboard and foil. During the activity the houses are attatched to the base.

Have royal icing in freezer bags for each girl. Snip off a corner when it is time to frost. Batches

of royal icing can be assigned out or done by leaders. Have each mother daughter bring a candy topping or two. You can have sign-ups to get all the basics, or just do a potluck. If girls do the sign-up, make invites, or help teach the song it counts for the "help plan an activity" goal.